


Longing to Linger Till Dawn

by WitchofEndor



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Gaslighting, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-02-15 02:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchofEndor/pseuds/WitchofEndor
Summary: Tony fell asleep in the Tower.He woke up in the cave.Tony Stark was stuck between realities: in one, he was a superhero who had turned his life around, years after escaping the cave in Afghanistan; in another, he was still in the cave, feverishly working on an escape plan. One was his life, and the other was a dream.If only he knew which was which.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Dream a Little Dream of Me'.
> 
> Work inspired by the Buffy episode 'Normal Again'.
> 
> WARNING: I didn't know how to warn for this, so I'm spelling it out: something will look to others like a suicide attempt, though that will not be the intent of the character. I'm not sure how to warn for that accurately, so I'm just putting it out there. 
> 
> Also, this is set in some MCU post-Avengers universe where nothing after the Avengers movie happened, and/or an ambiguous Avengers universe which just happens to be the characters from the MCU. *Shrug*

 

 

Tony fell asleep in the Tower, after a long evening of work and dealing with Tony’s newest workplace hazard (Clint), and then watching him getting reprimanded by Cap for accidentally causing a very small explosion in Tony’s workshop when he popped his head out of a vent and asked if Tony wanted a slice of pizza. It had been delightful, both because Cap had let off some steam that was previously aimed in Tony’s direction due to the fallout of the earlier battle, and because Tony really had wanted pizza.

It was, all in all, a great evening. Tony was tired and a little sore (both from the explosion and the battle), and was actually going to sleep at a reasonable hour for once, in preparation for wowing Pepper by being on-time for the morning board meeting.

Tony fell asleep in the Tower. He fell asleep thinking of all the things he was planning to do tomorrow – after the board meeting, he would go back to his workshop, where Steve would probably be hanging out and sketching if he wasn’t still pissed at Tony. Bruce had asked him to stop by his own lab in the afternoon to help him out with an experiment. And it was a Thursday, which meant movie night. Natasha was supposed to choose the movie, which was always a risk (everything about Natasha was at least somewhat threatening), but Tony enjoyed sharing the space with his team even when the movie wasn’t great.

Tony fell asleep in the Tower.

He woke up in the cave.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing that Tony noticed was that he was cold, all the way through to his bones. He hadn’t been this cold since…

He opened his eyes.

He was in the cave.

It wasn’t the first time that Tony’d had this dream, but it was more vivid than usual. Less blurry around the edges. The cold was biting, almost painful.

“I’m not sure how this makes sense,” a calm voice said, quiet enough that it wasn’t intended for Tony’s ears, and Tony looked up from his pillow to see Yinsen bent over some wires and frowning at them.

Tony blinked, and sat up slowly. This didn’t feel like a dream. He could feel the pain in his chest, hurting like it hadn’t since he’d first…

Tony looked down at the first arc reactor glowing from his chest. He lifted a hand to it and pressed down. The wounds were still new. He wasn’t healed from the surgery and the batterings he’d taken in his refusal to build the Jericho missile.

Yinsen had stopped moving, and when Tony looked up, he saw that Yinsen’s eyes were wide with surprise.

“You’re lucid,” he said, moving around the table and coming to stand next to Tony. “Good God, you’re finally lucid!”

“I’m…” Tony started, then shook his head. “I’m dreaming.”

“You’ve _been_ dreaming,” Yinsen said with a relieved half-laugh. “It’s been almost two days since you put that _thing_ into your chest, and you’ve barely been lucid since.”

A sense of dread was building in Tony’s stomach. It was the same feeling that preceded a big fall. Something was about to come crashing down around his ears – he could feel it.

“I’ve been sleeping?” he asked, barely processing the words as they passed his lips.

“No, not really,” Yinsen replied, holding a tiny flashlight up to Tony’s eyes to check his pupils. “You’ve been awake, but you’ve been… You haven’t been _awake_. I didn’t know if it was the super-battery you plugged into your chest cavity, or if you were finally in a shock response.” He nodded, apparently pleased with Tony’s pupils, and pulled back. “It’s good to have you back, Tony.”

“I’m not dreaming?” Tony asked, and he didn’t feel like he was dreaming, but he also—everything _else_ hadn’t felt like a dream. Had it?

Yinsen shook his head. “You’ve been building,” he said, “but your eyes have barely focused. You might want to take a look at your work, see if it makes any sense to you.”

“I must be dreaming,” Tony insisted, wrapping his arms around himself to starve off some of the cold. He had to be dreaming. It had been _years_ since the cave. It had been years since Yinsen—

Tony looked up at Yinsen, stared at him, and thought about how he had died in this godawful cave. Yinsen had never made it out. And Tony had never really forgiven himself for it. This wasn’t the first time Tony had dreamed of Yinsen, but those had been guilt-induced dreams, had left him feeling numb and hopeless when he’d awoken.

This Yinsen felt real.

But that didn’t make sense. It had been years. Tony had become Iron Man. Obie had—Stane had betrayed him, tried to kill him. Tony had fallen in love with Pepper, become an Avenger, fallen out of love with her after a painful breakup. There had been SHIELD, and Avengers Tower, and it was Natasha’s night to choose the movie.

Tony clung to that, even as he stared at Yinsen. Natasha was real. Natasha was terrifying, and flawed, and deadly, and she sometimes made Tony drink these calming herbal teas which Tony hated and would never admit kind of worked. Natasha’s scary android face would crack sometimes, just slightly, usually because Clint or Tony had said something hilarious, or because Steve had said something so incredibly sincere that it was hilarious.

And Steve. Steve was real. Tony had made him angry just today, during the battle. He clung to that memory as tightly as he could.

They had been fighting some ridiculous goddamn killer robots, and Tony and Steve were in an alley because Tony had swept Steve up out of the fight. Steve’s wrist was very much broken, and he was still somehow furious that Tony hadn’t let him keep going. They had basically been spitting venom at each other, faces close enough that Tony had been regretting flipping the faceplate up, and then Clint’s panicked voice had cut through the comms that they had incoming—

And Tony had turned and spun in front of Cap, protecting him from the beam of energy that the robot had pulsed in their direction.

And that had made everything worse, and Tony’s face had been bleeding from where something jagged had hit him, and even spitting in fury Steve had been beautiful.

Tony held onto that, held onto Steve, and told himself _I’m dreaming_.

He told himself _I’m dreaming_ , even though his chest hurt, and he had never felt pain like that in a dream before. Even though he was deeply cold, and Tony could see lines on Yinsen’s face which he’d forgotten long ago.

He was dreaming. He had to have been dreaming.

 

* * *

 

 

Tony woke up, gasping, in the Tower.

“JARVIS?” he asked, gathering handfuls of his sheets just to prove that he could feel them under his hands.

“ _Good morning, Sir,_ ” JARVIS replied, and then dutifully told him the date and time. It was barely an hour since he had crawled into bed.

“Thanks, J,” Tony replied, still gasping for breath. That had been an unusual nightmare. Nobody had died, and there had been no blood, but he had truly believed for a moment that he was back in the cave. Tony ran a hand over his face, trying to calm himself down. “Okay, workshop it is,” he concluded, and swung his legs out of the bed.

There was no way Tony was going back to sleep after that.


	2. Chapter 2

True to his word, Tony did not go back to sleep after his weird Yinsen dream.

Instead, he stayed up all night and figured out no fewer than three of the bigger problems he was facing in his workshop: one with the suit, one with a new model for SI, and one problem he hadn’t even known he had with jet-powered roller skates. (He hadn’t known there was a problem because he hadn’t been aware that he’d been designing jet-powered roller skates, but sometimes it took a caffeinated frenzy to figure out what he’d half-invented in a previous caffeinated frenzy.)

Finally, around five am, he collapsed on the cot in his workshop and stared at the ceiling instead of falling asleep.

At some point – Tony had no idea how much time had passed – JARVIS roused him from his blank stare with a simple, “ _Sir, Captain Rogers is on his way to the workshop_.”

“Tell him I died,” Tony replied.

JARVIS hesitated. “ _This tactic has been unsuccessful_.”

Steve was in the workshop moments later, his running shoes making soft noises against the floor. Tony didn’t look away from the ceiling.

“Hey, JARVIS told me you were up,” Steve greeted him. “Have you been down here all night?”

Tony shook his head in an attempt to bring him back from his strange blankness. It didn’t help very much, but it had the positive effect of encouraging him to turn to face Steve.

“Uh, no,” Tony replied. “I slept a bit.”

Steve’s lovely face shifted into a light frown, and he knelt in front of Tony’s cot.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Tony blinked, and searched himself for a moment for an answer. He wasn’t sure what it was. “Uh, I guess I’m just tired,” he landed on, even though he’d been awake much longer than this before without falling into this particular mood. “What can I do you for, Cap?”

Steve stayed put, kneeling in front of Tony, and his frown stayed put on his face. “I wanted to apologise. For yesterday,” he explained. “I may have overreacted.”

“You sure did,” Tony replied, doing his best to muster some cheer into his voice. It must have not matched his facial expression, because Steve’s frown only deepened. “But I guess, yeah, I see why you weren’t too happy with the whole jumping-in-front-of-you thing. Without the faceplate down. It wasn’t my best decision ever.”

To be clear, Tony’s mistake had been forgetting to flip the faceplate down. His mistake had not been shielding Steve from the unexpected beam of light. Saying that would probably cause Steve to be mad at him again, though, so he held it back.

Steve’s face shifted again, and he wasn’t frowning anymore, but he looked all the more concerned for it. “Maybe you should take the day off,” he suggested, which was frankly insulting. Tony wasn’t even _injured_ , beyond the shallow cut on his cheek.

The good news was that Steve suggesting Tony bench himself from his duties was enough to finally push him into sitting up. Tony’s limbs felt heavy, and every movement took way too much effort, but he was going to do his best to hide that from Cap.

“Nah, I just need coffee,” he insisted, then paused with his head tilted forward. He would just stay like this for a few more moments.

Unexpectedly, Steve lifted a hand and brushed back a lock of Tony’s hair from his forehead. “Just, don’t push yourself too hard,” he said, which was definitely insulting, but Tony didn’t have the energy to properly process the insult. “It’s movie night tonight,” he reminded Tony. “Natasha said she wants to watch something with explosions. Your favourite genre.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth kicked up into a half-smile, and suddenly, the day didn’t seem so insurmountable. “Got it,” he replied. “I’ll see you there. Save my spot on the couch for me.”

* * *

 

The oddly blank feeling disappeared about halfway through Tony’s morning meeting, which was actually a bit of a shame, because it was replaced by annoyed boredom. But the rest of the day went according to plan – inventing, and working with Bruce (which was always fun, because Bruce was a delight, and nobody else seemed to realise this fact), and he even got a quick nap in before movie night.

That didn’t stop him from falling asleep halfway through the movie, but Tony was so comfortable that he just allowed it to happen. His place was next to Steve on the couch, as per usual, and when he felt his head tilting to one side in a half-asleep gesture, Steve laid an arm around his shoulder and encouraged Tony to lean into him. So Tony had rested his head on Steve’s absurdly comfortable shoulder, and allowed himself to sleep.

“Tony,” Steve’s voice called to him softly, with a brief shake to rouse him from sleep.

_“Tony,” Yinsen said, voice calm and steady, with one hand shaking his shoulder. Tony blinked and looked up at him, and the lighting in the cave made Yinsen look gaunt and distressed. “You need to wake up.”_

“… wake up,” Steve finished. “You should get into your bed.”

Tony sat up suddenly and shook his head, trying to dislodge the weird Yinsen dream. It was still playing on the edges of his mind.

“Uh,” Tony said, and rubbed a hand across his Steve-warmed cheek. “No, I’m going back to the workshop.”

“No, you’re going to bed,” Steve said, in his Captain America voice.

Tony gave him a look, trying to convey the depth with which he hated Steve using the Captain America voice to boss him around. Steve gave him a look right back, which blatantly said, ‘I don’t care, you’re going to bed.’

“Unless you’re going to carry me there and strap me down—”

“And _that’s_ how much of this conversation I’m comfortable with hearing,” Clint insisted from the floor.

Tony went to his bedroom, because Cap was scarily intense about Tony getting sleep. However, he did not actually go to bed, because Tony was an adult and Steve could go screw himself. Also, despite his peaceful slumber on the couch, Tony now found that when he closed his eyes for too long… well. He could feel the cold air of the cave pressing down around him.

It would probably make sense to invest in some sleeping pills soon. Before, when the nightmares had plagued him, Tony had self-medicated with enough alcohol to numb his mind and chase away the dreams. Nowadays he was supposed to be off the poison, and it wouldn’t do any good to fall off the wagon and have a weird mental breakdown at the same time.

After an acceptable amount of time passed, Tony headed down to the workshop.

If he could still feel a whisper of damp cold on his skin from the cave, well. It was nobody’s business.

* * *

 

The thing was, it had actually been a long time since Tony had experienced recurring nightmares about Afghanistan. Sure, he had the occasional bad night centred around the explosion, the shrapnel in his chest, the months of the cave, or Yinsen’s dying breath… but that was mixed in with bad nights about the beautiful, terrible stretch of space and the threats he’d seen beyond the wormhole, or Obie’s betrayal, or Pepper in danger, or the Arc Reactor slowly killing him, or any of the number of not-so-great situations he’d found himself in since becoming Iron Man. Sometimes, it was even as simple as being told he wasn’t wanted on the team, that he was only here because of the money and tech he could provide, blah blah blah.

And if he was perfectly honest, those bad nights might have been semi-regular, but they weren’t nearly every night. Though Tony didn’t sleep as much as was healthy for a human body, most of his sleep _wasn’t_ plagued by nightmares.

Which is all to say this: the recurring cave-dreams were unsettling.

What was even more unsettling was that they didn’t contain themselves to sleeping hours.

Sure, a few moments of sleeping-on-his-feet were normal, because Tony really hadn’t slept properly in a while now. He’d caught an hour or two last night, after he’d worked himself so hard that he’d practically blacked out, but his body was definitely screwed up enough for a few moments of confused half-sleep and a few whispers of the cave throughout the day. Sure. He could accept that.

What he couldn’t accept was finding himself in the cave halfway through a sentence that was directed at Thor over breakfast.

Tony blinked, and Thor was gone, and Tony had a hammer in his hand. He was in the cave, pounding a piece of metal – it looked like the vague beginning of the mask for the Mark I.

“Yinsen?” Tony asked, turning to find his friend sitting at the table. “What’s going on?”

Yinsen gave him a long look. “How conscious are you right now?” he asked, suspicious.

“Definitely unconscious, since I’m dreaming of you,” Tony replied.

Yinsen sighed. “Okay. So you still think you’re dreaming. That’s… fine. Just keep working.”

Something about Yinsen’s resigned tone gave Tony pause.

Was he… _not_ dreaming?

It didn’t feel like a dream. He could feel the cold night air, and everything smelled terrible in a way he’d long put behind him. Every detail was exactly where it should be. It felt horribly, horribly real.

Tony thought about himself sitting at the kitchen table with Thor and Bruce – Bruce was reading the newspaper, the actual paper kind that Steve insisted on having delivered to them. Steve had been at the stove, making eggs. Natasha had made tea and then disappeared to work out with Clint just a few minutes ago. They were expecting Coulson to drop in. Tony held to the feeling of that kitchen.

And then he realised what was wrong with that scene. There had been bright sunlight pouring in through the window, and Thor had been—

Holy shit, Tony had been sitting at his kitchen table talking to _the god of thunder_. Captain fucking America had been making eggs. Dr Bruce Banner had been sitting there with his glasses perched on the end of his nose, seeming content, even though Tony had never met him and the last he’d heard Banner had made himself a monster in a terrible experiment that had ended in lots of death and the scientist dropping off the radar entirely.

Tony had been so sure that _this_ had been the dream. But this had really happened, was really happening, and everything about the scene in that kitchen had been wrong.

“Shit,” Tony said, looking down at the hammer in his hand and then at Yinsen. “I’m not dreaming.”

_“… Tony, can you hear me?”_

Tony blinked, and he was back in the kitchen. He tasted bile, like he was about to throw up.

The kitchen was bright, and everything was quiet. Bruce was crouching in front of him, frowning.

“Uh,” Tony replied, off-balance and nauseous. “What… What just happened?”

“Friend Tony,” Thor boomed, concern clear on his face, “you were regaling me with a story of battle, and in the midst of the great scene, you appeared to… feel unwell.”

Tony gave Thor a long look, and then glanced back to Bruce. “Bruce?” he asked. “Clarify?”

Bruce’s eyes were narrowed as he looked Tony over. “You just stopped,” Bruce replied. “Are you feeling okay? Dizzy at all?”

Steve cleared his throat. “You said, uh.” He paused for a moment. “You kept saying ‘no’, and then you said ‘I’m not dreaming’.”

“Huh,” Tony said, the beginning of panic playing in his chest. “Well, that’s weird, isn’t it? Isn’t that weird, Bruce? I guess I need to go to sleep. Sleeping on my feet, or uh, in my chair, as it happens to be.” He tried for a smile, and it didn’t sit right on his face. “I’ll just go take a nap.”

Tony was up and out of the kitchen before anyone had a chance to respond, and once he was in the elevator, he allowed himself to sink to the floor.

That had been a dream. It had to have been a dream. This was real. The tower was real. The Avengers were real. The cold metal of the elevator floor was real under his hands.

Except, well. It was unlikely, wasn’t it? That Tony had this life?


End file.
